Baseball's Relocation Game

By

Jason Fry The Wall Street Journal Online

Updated Sept. 30, 2004 12:15 p.m. ET

Baseball's announcement that the Montreal Expos will move to Washington, D.C., for the 2005 season marks the first time a baseball team has moved since 1972 -- when the second incarnation of the Washington Senators began their new lives as the Texas Rangers. But relocations aren't exactly rare in the sport's history.

The early years of the National League and the American League are a confusing welter of teams flickering out, merging and changing cities. But after the AL sorted itself out in the first years of the 1900s,...